A new NIRCam capability that allows for simultaneous coronagraph imaging in both the short and long wavelength channels is now available to the scientific community. This new mode was commissioned in June 2023 and shows overall excellent performance, both in collecting the data and in the end-to-end pipeline products. Observers who are planning to use this capability are invited to work with their NIRCam Instrument Scientist to ensure that their observation setup takes advantage of the well-tested offsets that will improve the placement of the coronagraphic masks. These offsets will not be needed soon, once the NIRCam coronagraph distortion model is updated.

The publicly available NIRCam program 4454 observed HD 114174, a binary system composed of a G3IV star and a white dwarf ~10,000 times fainter than the host star and at a separation of about 0.5 arcsec, using all 5 coronagraphic masks. Data shows contrasts of 10^-6 at a separation of about 1 arcsecond using pure reference differential imaging (RDI) with small grid dithers and just a single roll angle. The image below shows Stage 3 products from the official JWST pipeline that demonstrate the recovery of the white dwarf companion for the two channels using the intermediate size round mask (MASK335R). These data are available to download in MAST.